


Pieces Left Behind

by japangirlcmw



Series: Transgressions [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Drabble, Fallen Castiel, Fluff, M/M, Part 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-08
Updated: 2013-08-08
Packaged: 2017-12-22 19:14:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/917008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/japangirlcmw/pseuds/japangirlcmw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean doesn't know much about Angels, but he does know that it takes more than being drained of grace to really lose being what you are. </p><p>The first meeting of Dean and Castiel after the events of Season 8.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pieces Left Behind

It hadn’t worn off yet. Not all of it, anyway. 

After all, how can you really scrape something clean? Remnants, pieces of the past, they stay right where they were, engraved. Soldiers sometimes feel as though their humanity was torn away, when they were forced to fight. But, they will still cry and hold their children and wife when they return home. They never truly stop being a human being, no matter how great their crimes. 

If you were made an angel, even if your grace were torn from you, did you really lose yourself, your material, your soul, so quickly? Could you ever really stop being an angel? 

No fancy powers, maybe. But an angel was more than flight and kick-ass smiting ability. Dean knew that. Maybe at the beginning, when the windows blew out of the convenience store, and the television had been nothing but brain swallowing static, Angels were assholes. When they started the Apocolypse, behaved like animals, and less like the Angels of stained glass, he loathed them, nearly as much as he loathed demons. Hell, maybe more, because angels weren’t supposed to be that way. 

The Angel that stayed with him, through all things, though. That may have changed his mind a fair bit. About more than just his view of the heavenly beings, but how he viewed himself. 

Dean still reminded himself that Castiel wasn’t a male or female. He was all things, and nothing. He had seen civilizations rise and fall, had seen parts of human history that Dean couldn’t fathom. Dean wasn’t too book smart—but even he could appreciate all of what Cas was. He didn’t have much free time to think about it—But when he did steal a moment, he would sip a cold beer, and think of how far reaching Cas’s true form might be. 

Now, things were different. The form in his bed wasn’t the same. Tired, exhausted. Dean realized that seeing his brothers and sisters fall from the sky may have effects that would never fade from his mind. No matter how much he had hated Angels before, it was hell, what he had seen. At the time they plummeted from the clouds, he wished that they had somewhere soft to fall. He wished that things could have been different. 

Lucifer was probably cackling in his cage. 

He thought he had lost Cas. At the very least, he thought that his friend would have no memory of him, or would have been killed by Metatron, or his brethren. Yet there he was, having shown up three days after it had happened, at their ‘lair’, looking as though his eyes had no tears left to cry. Dean grabbed a hold of him, quite honestly having no issue with giving up hiding a thing. He’d deal with the jabbing comments from Sammy, the confused looks from Kevin. 

There was something between them. Maybe it was love. They had no time to discuss it, and Dean had no intention. But things were different now. 

So different. 

He would hold on this time, and not let pride get in the way. There were no times for sins now, this was a time for recreation. Rebirth. That was the only way things could go back to normal, in any sense. They would need strength for what was to come. Strength could come from their connection. 

He had asked Cas how he had gotten there, but he received no answer. He had helped his friend, leading him directly into a hot shower, and standing watch. Dean didn’t think that Cas had any real intention of learning how to operate a shower at the moment, and wanted to get him to bed as quickly as he could. He stripped Castiel of his filthy clothes, and turned the water temperature up to a safely hot level. Cas stood still, and as the water dripped over his face, his blue eyes drifted closed, an imitation of serenity. 

Dean had told Sammy and Kevin to start researching any leads, anything at all, they could use to start setting things right. He needed this time. 

Drying Cas off, and trying his best to make no awkward situations, he loaned him a pair of boxers and one of Sams oversized T-shirts, leading him to his bed, and closing the door behind him, to block out the sound of Sam’s furious typing or Kevins ramblings about what was to come. Cas shouldn’t have to think about it now. 

He hadn’t known what to say, or even if Cas wanted to hear it. But in the silence of the room, he found that he needed to fill it. “I’m sure you need rest. Have you been awake this entire time? Since…you know.” 

Cas didn’t answer. He was laying on the bed, the far side, facing the wall. Dean didn’t know if his eyes were open, but he knew that the angel wouldn’t be sleeping anytime soon. It was a new experience—one that would mean dreams, or nightmares. 

If Cas had seen Dean having nightmares since the pit, he could see why he would be terrified to close his eyes. 

Sighing, Dean began to strip down to his boxers. Cas would have to sleep, biologically, at least, and it sometimes made it better with someone close by. He wasn’t planning on letting Cas out of his sight anyway, with the idea that he could disappear—and this time, he wouldn’t have his wings to bring him back whenever Dean called, or prayed his name. The thought made something deep in Dean’s chest ache, and he sat on the bed, looking over at the angel. 

“We will figure this out. There has to be some scroll, or reverse button, something to fix all of this. It won’t be permanent. Something has to be able to help.” 

No answer. He was frustrated, not because Cas wouldn’t speak, but because he was suddenly afraid that he couldn’t. What if something else had happened? 

“Cas, don’t go all Little Mermaid on me.” 

He waited a moment, for that constant response—‘I don’t understand that reference,’—but it never came. He couldn’t wait anymore. 

“Cas.” Reaching out hesitantly, he put a hand on his back, waiting for a response. There was a shiver, something bone deep. “Castiel.” 

It gained a response. Soft, but something, anything. “Don’t call me that.” 

Dean raised an eyebrow, confused. “That’s your name. I know I don’t usually say the whole thing, but—“ 

“I’m not deserving of that name anymore.” 

The words that fell from the blue-eyed ones lips were nearly frozen, dead, and it invoked something in Dean, the same instinct he would have to jump in front of an attack aimed at his little brother. Pulling the cover up over himself and Cas, reaching over to make sure that his protector was covered, he fluffed his pillow, and turned the lamp beside the bed to the lowest setting. The room was nearly completely dark, but under that cover, perhaps it would be easier to speak. 

“What are you talking about, Cas?” 

It took a few moments for the response. It was a whisper. “Castiel, that is an angels name. That is a heavenly name. Of which I am no longer part.” There was a pregnant pause. “It is a holy name. Sacred. Not for me.” 

Dean understood. Castiel had fallen, like the others. He didn’t know the circumstance, whether Cas had fallen from the sky, or whether something else more nasty had occurred. But it scarcely mattered now. He forced the idea into his mind that they were alone in the room. The door closed, dark. 

Whether he were fallen or not, Dean could not force his brain to see Cas in a different light. He was what he would always be. 

“Castiel.” 

A shudder beside him. “Dean—“

“Castiel.” Dean pushed closer to the form beside him, placing his chin on Cas’s shoulder, lips brushing against his ear, his whisper hopefully calming in the darkness. “Castiel, Castiel, Castiel.” He said the name in reverence, blessed it with his tongue, wanted suddenly to kneel before it. 

Cas turned his head, to look up at him, and the blue still shone, otherworldly to the hunter in the darkness. If you were born an angel, made an angel, sculpted by God in his wisdom, could you ever truly be fallen? 

“I’ll call you Castiel, because that is who you are.” He heard Cas take a breath, begin to speak, but he wouldn’t let him. “Fallen, that is what you think you are. I don’t know what happened up there, Cas, I don’t know what you are feeling, how real this all is, but,” he ran his hand down Cas’s body, looking for a hand to grab and hold, tight as he was able.  
“You pulled me out of the pit. Do you remember that?” 

Castiel turned his body, to lay on his back, looking up at Dean in disbelief. “Of course I do. How could I forget?” 

Dean was propped up on his arm, lips close to Castiel’s forehead, still grasping the angel’s hand. “You rebuilt me. You…forgave me, when I was nowhere close to being worthy of it. Would you still forgive me now, for all that I did?” 

Castiel gasped, shaking his head. “Of course I would. You are worthy of so much, you are the righteous man—“ 

Soft lips pressed against the Angel’s forehead, followed by the stroking of the whiskers on Dean’s chin. “You realize that normal humans wouldn’t forgive me. Not for what I did.” He let go of his hand, bringing his rough hand up to cup Castiel’s face. “I will call you Castiel, because you are an angel. You are my angel. Mine. Because while the rest of the people, fallen angels, demons, may see you as fallen, as one of us, I know the true you.” 

Silence. Dean suddenly felt very vulnerable, but forced himself to finish. “Even Sam doesn’t realize it. But this?” He brought Cas’s hand up to touch the mark on his shoulder, which brought a startled, pained gasp from the man below him. “This is you. I don’t know if your wings are gone, or just broken. I don’t know if you are still the size of the Chrysler Building in there, and I don’t know if you can still smite a demon. But Cas, I don’t care about any of that.” 

It was sudden. Dean felt himself being pulled down, his chest against another, as the angel held onto him, as a child would hold on to his mother. It was too emotional, too deep, not something that suited a hunter. But they were alone. 

His shoulder was wet, where tears ran down the face of his Holy one. He laid against the pillows, holding Castiel in his arms, letting more impossible tears fall. He felt as though he should say one more thing, he felt as though he should express this feeling built up in his chest, his love. He knew that Castiel felt the same, a kind of infinite love, one that came from him fighting off the hoard, to raise him from perdition. 

Yet, ‘I love you’ seemed painfully inaccurate. It was too little. There weren’t words enough. 

Over the night, things happened gradually. No advantage taken. Castiel had leaned up to place a gentle kiss on his lips, and he had returned it, equally as gentle. His face was wet with the others tears, and he felt as though he were able to share the weight. 

An unbearable weight, he knew. 

Dean had wanted to comfort. Something he didn’t know much about, too rough. After kissing so softly, he had lifted Castiel’s head by touching his chin, and began to kiss his neck, his tongue slipping out to taste the skin, knowing that it was the first time he had been touched in love, still an angel inside, an angels mind inside the mind of a man.  
It was like touching God. 

Touching his personal God. And it would continue, it would be pure, and he would bring peace, as he had been given peace. 

“Castiel…”

 

====

End Part One.


End file.
